Hands up who wants housing

The eagerly-awaited Greater London Authority Housing Commission report called for 28,000 new affordable homes per year and a 50 per cent affordable quota on all residential building sites in the city.

But in a frank interview with Housing Today Livingstone made it clear that this is only the start.

He views his lack of direct housing powers as "merely an oversight" as he attempts to take charge of housing policy in the capital.

How do will you monitor the 50 per cent affordable housing target? In the past boroughs failed to get to 25 per cent. Do you plan to name and shame councils?

Ken: "It’s not a question of naming and shaming, developers simply won’t get planning permission unless they provide for it. If they wish to gain planning permission then they’ll have to come back. At the moment far too many councils, because of the desperate pressures on their budgets, take kickbacks from developers to help keep finances rolling and exempt the developers from doing this [providing social housing]. I’m saying that’s too short sighted and we’ve got to provide the housing in London that is needed."

Many developers have been critical of the proposal to demand a minimum of 50 per cent affordable housing. Are there any house builders who have come out in favour?

Ken: "If you recall the prediction of the end of the civil aviation industry when the government did away with duty free, no-one has noticed any difference and of course developers are going to hype up their demands to get the best possible deal. What I’m saying is this is coming so let’s sit down and discuss it so we get it right so you [builders] can carry on developing, Londoners get the housing they need and you make a reasonable profit."

What’s the significance of getting developers to build affordable housing on commercial sites? Is it a way of meeting them halfway or a warning against refusing to develop affordable housing on residential sites?

Ken: "I think part of the problem in some areas of London is that in many of our commercial areas nobody lives there, it’s dead at night, people find them frightening places. If you look at Paris or Madrid commerce and people living in the same areas make them a much more exciting combination. And so we are simply saying to developers: we’ll let you have much more intensive development on that type of site but somewhere on that site you’ve got to provide housing for people to live so that the area stays alive at night and at weekends."

In terms of spending you talk often talk about making a special case for the capital. Other housing organisations that distribute cash have been criticised for failing to recognising London’s specific needs. Will you be making a special case for the GLA to be the body that distributes housing cash in the capital?

Ken: "I always though that once we had a directly elected mayor it should be the mayor that distributes the money that the Housing Corporation currently distributes among housing associations. Because the mayor draws up plans strategy, the mayor’s deeply involved in problems across London. But we are talking about more money than the Housing Corporation is currently distributing. We’ve got to make the case to government in terms of support for social housing, because not many schemes would be viable without some form of subsidy by the housing association movement or government schemes. We’ve got to make sure that we get those resources."

You do see the GLA as the London Housing Corporation then?

Ken: "Well that will require legislation in the future, it was an oversight I think the first time around. But the key in all of this is not an issue over a bit of money but the fact that as mayor I set the planning strategy for London, it has legal force and when that comes in clearly I would be surprised if I didn’t take the advice of this Housing Commission and go for 50 per cent affordable homes on residential sites."

The commission report proposes levying full council tax on empty homes. But won’t you need legislation for that?

Ken: "It would require new legislation but a lot of things in this report are aimed at government. There are things that I can do, there are things that borough councils can do but there are other changes that central government is going to make and that’s why the most important thing was that the London boroughs were here [at the report launch] today saying: we agree with this report, we are jointly making this case to government. And I suspect you’ll find that the business community is going to come in on this basis as well because they are beginning to suffer. They see that there aren’t enough affordable homes for their workers."